2011-04-27

There's a great post today at Ben Trovato Blog of Brazilian model Yasmin shot by Rita Zimmermann. Nothing unusual about that, as I've noted before a lot of great photography gets posted there. And they always leave the EXIF data, so that gearheads like me can obsess about it. Which leads me to the unusual part - it looks like the whole story was shot with a Sony NEX-5 and the 18-55mm kit lens.

2011-04-22

While I was reading the rest of Thom Hogan's post, he also wondered what Nikon could possibly do for their next round of consumer DSLRs in 2012. He thinks the current DX models are so good, and they are good, that Nikon will have a tough time improving them significantly. Here's the quote.

The question that needs to be asked is whether or not this strategy will work for another consumer DSLR generation. Such a generation would start to appear in md-to-late 2012. But what would it have that the current ones don't?

I've got some ideas. How about:

bringing sensor production in house

a breakthrough in dynamic range

multi-format sensors, à la Panasonic

getting rid of the Bayer array

a true black and white sensor

That's just off the top of my head. I think there are lots of things Nikon could do. Besides, the lower end of the consumer range will probably get eaten by mirrorless at some point anyway.

2011-04-20

A few days ago, Nikon accidentally leaked a new 50mm 1.8G AF-S lens. That's fine, and I love my 35mm f/1.8g, but what I'd really like to see is a full line of DX lenses. I've seen Thom Hogan speculate about this before, and I like some of his suggestions, but here's what I'd like to see.

I remember being pretty excited about the Silicon Film EFS-1 e-film cartridge back then. It was pretty hot vaporware for a couple of years, and I think there were even semi-working prototypes. It never came to fruition however, which was probably for the best with it's 1.3 megapixels and a terrible crop factor.

2011-04-04

I've owned a Lensbaby 2.0 for a long time, and it's never turned out to be as cool or as useful as I thought it would be. It's fun, but I find that I just don't use it that often. I figured that would probably be the last Lensbaby product I'd ever want, but some of their recent products might change that.

First with the recently introduced Sweet 35 optic, and now with the new Composer Pro that I just read about today, I'm thinking about upgrading. With every new iteration the Lensbaby products seem get closer to actually being useful, and this new combo looks really interesting.